


Say It Ain't So

by akaparalian



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff and Humor, M/M, Truth Spells
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-14 14:44:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16042580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akaparalian/pseuds/akaparalian
Summary: “It should wear off in a few hours,” Allura is saying, her tone very soothing and gentle, as though she thinks this information will calm Keith down at all.It doesn’t. It most certainly does not calm him down even a little bit, and he tells her so, because at the moment he doesn’t have any other options.Or: Keith gets truth pollened and faces instant, crushing regret.





	Say It Ain't So

**Author's Note:**

> My second fill for my Sheith Voltron Bingo card, for the "Regret" square! To yell at me about this (or Voltron in general, or whatever you want, really), come find me on [Twitter,](http://twitter.com/akaparalian) [Tumblr,](http://floralegia.tumblr.com) or [Ko-Fi,](http://ko-fi.com/akaparalian) if you're so inclined.
> 
> And if you have prompts/suggestions/ideas/thoughts for the three remaining squares in my first column -- Growth, Healing, and Presumed Dead -- please send 'em my way! :'D

“It should wear off in a few hours,” Allura is saying, her tone very soothing and gentle, as though she thinks this information will calm Keith down at all.

It doesn’t. It most certainly does not calm him down even a little bit, and he tells her so, because at the moment he doesn’t have any other options.

“That is such bullshit,” he says, springing up off of the table where she’d had him lay down so she could run whatever-the-fuck tests on him and the weird shit that just got shot into his face. Pollen, she’d said, of some kind of alien flower. Except that is so completely not the point at the moment. “You’re really great and all, and I respect you a lot and it still makes me really upset that you don’t trust me as much now that we know I’m part Galra, but right now? Bullshit, Allura. All you’re giving me is bullshit.”

“Oh my God,” Lance stage-whispers from the other side of the room, where he has been observing the proceedings with no small amount of glee. He was the one to bring Keith back, which, in Keith’s mind, just makes the situation that much worse. “This is the best day of my life.”

Keith swings his head around to glare at him. “You have three seconds to get out of here before I kill you, no matter how much I don’t actually hate you.”

“Not as good as Allura’s, but I’ll take it,” Lance mutters, and very wisely makes himself scarce.

“I know it’s unpleasant, Keith, but it’s going to be all right,” Allura says, evidently trying for bracing this time. “You’re among friends here. No one is going to take advantage of this. And what’s so bad about telling the truth, anyway? You’re not exactly known for being… diplomatic.”

“I know I’m among friends, that’s the _problem_ ,” Keith replies, actively trying to shove his fingers down his throat in an attempt to stop the words from coming out. All he really accomplishes is making himself sound muffled. “I’m going to say stupid, embarrassing shit, and you guys are going to remember it forever and laugh about it. Or _not_ laugh about it, which is worse.”

Allura’s brow furrows. “What could you possibly have to say that would be so embarrassing? I already knew you respected me, Keith. And… and I already knew I hurt you by reacting the way I did when I found out about your heritage. And Lance already knew that you don’t really hate him. Probably.”

“ _You’re_ not the problem,” Keith groans back through his hand, which, of course, is when the problem rears its ugly head. _His_ ugly head. ...His unfairly handsome head. Damn. Keith can’t even lie to _himself_ at the moment.

“Keith?” Shiro says as he barrels into the room, skidding to a stop halfway between the door and where Keith is now standing very stiffly, right next to the exam table. Allura takes one look between them, and comprehension immediately starts to dawn on her face. ‘Oh,’ she mouths, casting Keith a look that he can’t quite read, something that falls between sympathy and tough love.

“I really don’t want to talk to you right now,” Keith blurts, though it comes out garbled enough that Shiro doesn’t seem to get it. He mostly just looks confused, which is good, because, God, Keith _doesn’t_ want to talk to him, but he also doesn’t want to be a dick about it. The whole goal for today has suddenly become Avoid Hurting Shiro In The Many Ways It Is Possible For Him To Hurt Shiro, Given The Current Proceedings.

“What’s going on?” Shiro says, addressing his question to Allura this time. “Lance told me he got hit with something. Is he okay?”

“Keith is going to be just fine,” Allura promises, though she’s glancing back and forth between them like she’s expecting something to go terribly wrong at any moment. Or perhaps terribly right. Her expression isn’t making it entirely clear, and Keith’s kind of too distracted to parse it anyway. 

“What did he get hit with?” Shiro presses, then turns his attention back to Keith. The worried, beseeching look in his eyes almost does Keith in. “Keith, what’s going on?”

“Well, it’s a little complicated, but he was dosed with a pollen that —” Allura begins. Keith hears her almost in slow motion, because even as she’s speaking he’s ripping his hand away from his mouth so that he can cut her off, even as he desperately, desperately tries to convince himself not to, compelled by something beyond his control. 

“Some alien plant hit me with this shit that forces me to tell the truth, even when I don’t want to say anything at all, and I want you to go away so that I won’t accidentally tell you that I’m in love with you,” he says, all at once.

You could hear a pin drop anywhere in the Castle of Lions. You could probably hear a pin drop on Earth. You could definitely hear the sound of Keith smacking his hand back over his mouth, a sharp skin-on-skin noise that makes Shiro flinch. Allura’s face is twisted up in a mask of shock and sympathy; Shiro mostly just looks like the floor has dropped out from under him. And Keith?

Keith just runs.

—

He goes to hide out in Red, because he’s not sure where else he _can_ go, and because she’s basically the last thing left in the galaxy that makes him feel safe, now that he’s gone and fucked things up with Shiro. ( _And_ because no matter _what_ he tells her, she probably won’t tease him about it. Because she’s a robot. A psychic lion robot, sure, but still.)

Of all the stupid ways for the truth to come out, after _years_ of keeping his mouth shut and his feelings tamped down, he had to go and get roofied by some alien plant and then just _blurt everything out_ like a moron. Fuck. He can feel the ache of it in his chest, the sure, heavy weight of the knowledge that Shiro is never, ever, ever going to look at him the same way again. They can never go back to normal ever again. He probably won’t get to have Shiro’s support — an arm around his shoulders after a mission, a soft word when he’s starting to get too riled up — in the same way ever again. 

It isn’t even like he’d just said, “I have a crush on you,” or “I like you a lot,” or “I’m into you,” or something else that could be played off somehow — a held-over childish infatuation, a chemical rush because Shiro is, objectively, hot as fuck. No. He’d said, “I’m in love with you,” and it’s not like that isn’t _true_ , like that hasn’t been true for what feels like forever, but he saw the face Shiro made when the words hit him, saw the way his eyes shuttered and closed down around the shock. 

He should have known he’d find some way to ruin this eventually. Shiro always just gives and gives and _gives_ where Keith is concerned, and Keith had thought that Kerberos — losing him — had been the sort of karmic balance for that, the universe looking at everything Shiro had ever given him and taking it all right back. 

But then he got Shiro back, too, so this… this must be karma trying to make it right all over again. He should have seen it coming. He shouldn’t have let himself get hit in the face by that _stupid fucking flower_. He should have run out of the room as soon as Shiro came in. He should have —

A knock echoes against Red’s side, and Keith startles hard in the pilot’s seat.

“Keith?”

He squeezes his eyes shut tight. Shiro must be standing just outside; his voice carries easily to where Keith’s sitting. Maybe if he just — it wasn’t really a question, so the compulsion to answer isn’t so bad, if he can just grit his teeth and keep his mouth shut, then maybe — 

“In here,” he says, despite all effort to the contrary. He manages to say it quietly, his voice low and resigned, but he has no doubt Shiro hears it anyway, because isn’t that just how his luck is working out lately?

Sure enough, he hears footsteps from the entry gangplank, growing closer. Shiro stops somewhere behind him, far enough away that Keith can’t really see him in his peripheral vision, and there’s a moment of silence that’s even more awkward for the way it seems to stretch on and on and _on_.

Finally, Keith can’t take it. 

“Look, I’m sorry,” he blurts. For once, he might actually be kind of grateful for the stupid pollen thing; at least it’s making this part a little easier. “You can’t even imagine how sorry. I know this isn’t what you want, and I was never going to tell you, I wouldn’t _do_ that to you, because I didn’t want to fuck this up, you’re too important, but of course I fucked it up anyway, and —”

“Keith,” Shiro says, softly, sounding like it hurts him just a little, and somehow that one word is all it takes to shut him up. The pressure in his chest that forces him to speak seems to disappear altogether, at least for the moment, and he gasps for air, his breathing so loud in his own ears that he almost misses the sound of Shiro walking closer. He shudders at the light touch of Shiro’s hand on his shoulder, his throat tight with a ball of emotions that he can’t even begin to untangle. 

“Keith,” Shiro says again, over the sound of Keith’s ragged breathing, over the static in his head and the painful pulse of shame and regret and preemptive mourning crowding up against his lungs. 

“I’m _sorry_ ,” Keith groans, but he doesn’t say it because he’s being forced to; it isn’t ripped out of him. He says it because he wants to, he _has_ to, he needs Shiro to understand.

“You don’t need to be sorry,” Shiro murmurs, and suddenly he’s there: not behind Keith and touching his shoulder, but in front of him, crowding into his space and pulling Keith out of his seat and up against Shiro’s chest instead. Keith tucks his head into the crook of Shiro’s neck on instinct, an impulse he’d normally never let himself give into, but God, _God_ , if Shiro’s offering him this contact as some kind of consolation prize, then, well, he’s too emotionally wrung out right now to not take it. 

“I do,” Keith mumbles into his neck. “Of course I need to be sorry.”

This time, when Shiro speaks, he can _feel_ it, the rumble of sound where their chests are pressed together.

“Keith, you don’t need to apologize because I love you, too.”

The world freezes all over again, just like it had back in Allura’s lab when Keith got himself into this mess, and suddenly it’s so quiet that Keith can hear both of their heartbeats. His own, of course, is pounding in his ears, but in the silence of Red’s main cabin suddenly he can hear Shiro’s, too, rabbiting away just as fast.

Oh. Oh, fuck.

“You what?” he says, completely unintelligently, his brain and mouth completely disconnected. He can’t manage to force anything else out; either the alien truth pollen is starting to wear off, or even _it_ doesn’t know what to do with this.

Shiro laughs softly, a quiet, somehow self-conscious sound that also manages to be incredibly fond. “I love you, Keith. So much.”

Maybe he died. Maybe that’s what this is: that pollen was actually poison, and he’s dead now, or at least in a coma or something, and this is some kind of fantasy, his own little version of heaven. “But I — you —”

“It didn’t happen right away,” Shiro tells him quietly, pulling him even tighter into his embrace. Keith’s hands are shaking when they finally come up to knot behind Shiro’s neck, hugging him back. “But I also think maybe I’ve been… a little bit in denial about it for longer than I really realized.”

There are about a million things Keith wants to ask or say in response to that, but they’re all deflections, his brain refusing to believe that he can really have this, that any of this is real. Not a single one of them is the truth. So what comes out of his mouth instead is, “I don’t think I could be in denial about this if I tried, and there was a while there where I tried really, really hard.”

Getting kicked out of the Garrison had changed his perspective on a lot of things. Including that.

Shiro pulls away just slightly, but only so he can reach in to tilt Keith’s chin up with one hand and press their foreheads together. “I kind of gathered,” he teases, his voice impossibly warm, “what with the yelling about it and then bolting.”

Keith socks him in the shoulder, but it’s half-hearted at best. “I thought you were going to… I don’t know… kick me out of the castle. Or at least never talk to me again.”

“I’d have to be the biggest idiot in the galaxy to do either of those things,” Shiro informs him. “Maybe even the universe. Because I don’t know if I mentioned this, but I love you. You’re incredible.”

Oh, God. “That’s gonna be the way things are now, huh?” Keith says, a little dazed. “The… sweet talk.”

Shiro grins. “Absolutely.”

Keith ponders that for a moment. Actually, Keith ponders everything for a moment: the way Shiro’s eyes are locked onto his, the way puffs of breath keep hitting his lips, the bright, warm, slightly hysterical laughter that’s threatening to burst out of him at any second, and, most of all, the idea that this thing he’s been wanting for so long, but had told himself was completely out of reach, has fallen right into his lap, and it’s real, and it’s here, right here, in the spaces in between where he and Shiro aren’t touching and in all of the places that they are.

For a moment, he wonders what to say, and then he realizes that there’s really only one option.

“I think I like the sound of that,” Keith says, and it’s the truth. 


End file.
